Amanda Christini

President & Co-founder, Blackfynn

Amanda is the President and co-founder of Blackfynn, a life sciences company building a cloud-based data integration and analytics platform to accelerate disease-modifying therapeutic development and improve clinical care for patients with neurologic diseases. Amanda has 20 years of experience in the biotechnology industry, clinical medicine, the business and strategy of medicine, and leveraging technology to change clinical practice. Prior to co-founding Blackfynn, Amanda was on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Medicine, and was Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Penn Medicine Center for Healthcare Innovation. Before her medical career, Amanda led business development for over a decade at early-stage biotechnology companies.

TRNDS Speaker Spotlight

Why are you participating in TRNDS 2017?

Unless the community of translational researchers, clinicians and companies is able to use optimally the data we are generating, we will never solve the growing healthcare crisis. Our ability to make paradigm-shifting advances will continue to be fundamentally limited.

What are some potential applications of technology in rare disease research?

Development of disease-modifying therapeutics for rare neurologic diseases has been hindered by a combination of factors, including:

Small and fragmented patient populations limiting power to determine disease mechanism, identify and characterize disease sub-phenotypes, and stratify patients appropriately

Lack of “druggable” targets – and biomarkers of response – grounded in disease mechanism and physiology

Siloed data and experts

Limited ability to find, recruit, engage and monitor patients longitudinally, including the ability to capture and analyze streaming data from implantable and wearable devices Blackfynn’s Platform plus its domain expertise in data management, analytics and neurology has the potential to address these barriers.

Tell us about Blackfynn’s efforts to foster innovation and drive therapeutic development.